I don't have the patience to read the thread. Can someone just tell me if he's talked about lizard men yet?
Posts by A Ha
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192Atheism's occult roots
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122
Atheists V Creationists ... FACE OFF
by snare&racket inwe should set 3 topics.
1. creation and evolution (origins of life).
2. religion.
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A Ha
This isn't the thread for it, but we simply do not know enough about the universal constants to say what their possible ranges are. Some of the constants (some say all but one of them) may be derived from other constants, or a single foundational constant, and would therefore not have any possible value other than what they have.
I searched your linked articles for a reference to 10^120, and found only one that said it is that much smaller than it was predicted to be under a certain model. That's not addressing the available range for the cosmological or any other constant
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122
Atheists V Creationists ... FACE OFF
by snare&racket inwe should set 3 topics.
1. creation and evolution (origins of life).
2. religion.
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A Ha
A finely tuned universe like our own to the order of 1/10^120
We cannot get this number without a denominator. We don't have one, so the odds are incalculable.
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122
Atheists V Creationists ... FACE OFF
by snare&racket inwe should set 3 topics.
1. creation and evolution (origins of life).
2. religion.
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A Ha
[edit: sorry for the formatting. it keeps bolding the last part of my post.]
I tend to agree with ST's suspicion that Collins was indoctrinated more than he realizes as a child. That, or he just does a very bad job of explaining how he got from "Moral Law + Longing for Something Greater than Ourselves = Christian God with all the Baggage that Concept Carries." He doesn't explain why he rejected a deist or pantheist notion of God. Later he rejects secular, liberal interpretations of the Christian God, but gives no reason for doing so.
Unfortunately, he doesn't do much of a job explaining how a man with a scientific/empirical leaning accepts a God, and doesn't even attempt to explain how he got to the conservative Christian version. This is my biggest frustration with this section.
I have a post limit, so I'm going to combine a few thoughts (need to talk to Simon about getting my old account back):
Page 35 he starts rebutting the four main objections to the idea of God.
1) Isn't the idea of God just wish fulfillment?
He describes various numinous feelings, then asks if they, like the Moral Law, are, "an inkling of what lies beyond..." Well, he didn't establish how the Moral Law proved anything. After first asking if the numinous might also be an example, he seems to just assume it for the rest of the section.
p. 37 He explains that atheists view such longings as wishful thinking, not indications of the supernatural. He rebuts this by attacking a [crackpot] view from Freud that we creat God in the image of our fathers. I don't think anybody today accepts this notion. This is a straw man.
p. 38 He concludes by quoting Lewis (which he does 48,736 times in this section), saying the wishful-thinking inherent in everyone is proof that it was created in us. " Why would such a universal and uniquely human hunger exist, if it were not connected to some opportunity for fulfillment?"
I can't really argue with the quote, but it just seems like a baseless assertion to me. Can a theist help explain what's compelling about this argument?
2) What about all the harm done in the name of Religion?
He offers two main answers: 1) many great things have been done as well, and; 2) the Church is made up of fallen people.
pp. 41, 42. He makes the typical argument that atheist regimes are no better. My first reaction to this is, "So that's the feather in your cap: 'we might suck, but we're no worse than anybody else.'?"
More importantly, the charge is not accurate, according to historians and experts on the cultures used as examples. He says Marxist Russia and Maoist China were, "aiming to establish societies explicitly based upon atheism."
Actually, they wanted to establish totalitarian regimes, and worked to remove anything that would get in the way of that. Religion was just one of the obstacles. They did not work to set up an atheist government, just a godless one. North Korea is an example of an “atheist” state that far more closely resembles a theocracy than anything else.
3) Why would a loving God alow suffeing in the world?
This section really pissed me off.
p. 44. “Science reveals that the universe, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evolutionary process. The consequences of that can include the unpredictability of the weather, the slippage of a tectonic plate, or the misspelling of a cancer gene in the normal process of cell division. If at the beginning of time God chose to use these forces to create human beings, then the inevitability of these other painful consequences was also assured. Frequent miraculous interventions would be at least as chaotic in the physical realm as they would be in interfering with human acts of free will.”
So this omniscient God couldn't come up with a better way of creating us than a process that would cause us suffering and death later on? There were no othe forces available to the Creator of the Universe? Correct me if I'm wrong, but God didn't 'intend' for the rebellion in the Garden or The Fall. So he created us to be perfect, but his creation process was going to randomly kill a bunch of us for millions of years?
Maybe someone can explain the last sentence to me. Is he saying that God can't prevent earthquakes and tornadoes because that would violate our Free Will?
But this is where he really starts to lose me.
p. 46 After quoting Lewis again, he says,
"As much as we would like to avoid those experiences, without them would we not be shallow, self-centered creatures who would ultimately lose all sense of nobility or striving for the betterment of others?”
Earlier he said this nobility was innate in us, perhaps it was God speaking to us. Now the nobility is created or developed only through pain?
This is the clincher:
p. 46. He tells about how his daughter was raped, an event which traumatized her for years.
“In my case I can see, albeit dimly, that my daughter's rape was a challenge for me to try to learn the real meaning of forgiveness in a terribly wrenching circumstance. In complete honesty, I am still working on that. Perhaps this was also an opportunity for me to recognize that I could not truly protect my daughters from all pain and suffering; I had to learn to entrust them to God's loving care, knowing that this provided not an immunization from evil, but a reassurance that their suffering would not be in vain. Indeed, my daughter would say that this experience provided her with the opportunity and motivation to counsel and comfort others who have gone through the same kind of assault.”
I understand that there is sometimes a desparate need to find a silver lining to horrific events like this, but I just can't respect someone who uses this babyish reasoning. How does it ever enter your mind that God caused/allowed your daughter to go through this so you could learn forgiveness? Or perhaps you, a grown man with a grown daughter, hadn't yet quite realized that you can't completely protect her, so God caused/allowed her to be raped so you'd get this very important lesson.
God: "Hey Jesus, we've got a 45 year old man down there with a 20 year old daughter. He thinks he's able to protect her completely from any and all harm.
Jesus: "Where did he get that notion? Most of them figure that out before they ever reach adulthood. Is he slow in the head?"
God: "No, he's actually a very smart scientist, but he has been reading a lot of C.S. Lewis."
Jesus: "So, what do you want to do about it? Want to let him figure out on his own that he can't always protect her?"
God: "No, where's the fun in that?"
Jesus: "So... car accident?"
God: "No need to be cruel. Let's just rape her."
Jesus: "I'm on it."
And here's the part I love about these kinds of desperate rationalizations... he's still not sure what the message was! He's got a couple ideas, but he believes that God caused/allowed his daughter to be raped to teach him a lesson, and he's not sure he got the lesson.
I did not intend to read this book with the goal of finding every nit-picky objection I could. But at the same time, I was expecting more from a 'man of science' than the same braindead stuff you hear from other apologists.
4) How can a rational person believe in miracles?
He discusses Bayes Thorem. I think he's misusing it.
pp. 49-50. He seems to indicate that a "committed materialist" wil not recognize a miracle, no matte how unlikely the odds. But he gives examples that are actually very feasible in the real world. A 1:2407 or 1:10,000 event is not so astonishing that a materialist is just burying his head in the sand if he doesn't proclaim it an obvious miracle.
He goes to some length to credit himself personally with a healthy dose of skepticism, while being able to go where the math leads him, but he doesn't credit the naturalist with the same open-mindedness.
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122
Atheists V Creationists ... FACE OFF
by snare&racket inwe should set 3 topics.
1. creation and evolution (origins of life).
2. religion.
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A Ha
I've just finished part I, which is more about the emotional journey, so I'm willing to give him a little leeway, assuming the hard scientific stuff will be tackled in the later parts.
In his defense, I'll note that he says early on that his book is aimed at believers, non-believers, and undecideds, so it's not unreasonable for him to make some emotional and faith-based arguments. But when he gets to the part that skeptics will be most interested in, he'd better come correct!
Side note: Part I is basically a tribute to C.S. Lewis. This is a bit annoying to me, because I find Lewis to be a hack.
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122
Atheists V Creationists ... FACE OFF
by snare&racket inwe should set 3 topics.
1. creation and evolution (origins of life).
2. religion.
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A Ha
Meh, Dan Barker (former evangelist turned atheist) does much the same in his book, Godless. I found Barker's mini-bio (and contrasting it with the JW notion of gaining converts) pretty interesting. Collins' wasn't interesting, per se, but it wasn't a hardship to read.
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122
Atheists V Creationists ... FACE OFF
by snare&racket inwe should set 3 topics.
1. creation and evolution (origins of life).
2. religion.
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A Ha
I don't know how active I'll be in the conversation, but I'm going to read the book.
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long time study
by happy-n-alive inso i am 20 now and i had my first study when i was 14. no jehovahs witness relatives and i am currently in my second book with one more chapter to go.
the reason it took so long is because it started out very sporadic andd short.
anyways, a friend and i were talking and i said i dont think i want to get baptise anytime soon and she said they may want to 'see a return on their investment' -_- so my question is if any witnesses ever got pushy with you about taking the next step after you have studied with them a long time.
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A Ha
When I was coming up there was a semi-official six-month rule. If a study wasn't ready to get baptized within six months, you were supposed to move on and stop wasting your time. Few people I knew actually did end their studies, I think primarily because they wanted to be able to record the stat every month.
My advice would be to quit the study. Not to stop wasting their time, but to stop wasting yours.
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33
Thinking of changing my life/ long rant
by DATA-DOG ini want to drastically change my life.
i am stagnating and will eventually drive my truck into an oncoming semi truck.
short of faking my death there are only so many things i can do.
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A Ha
DD, I had an account on this site over a decade ago. One of the reasons I became inactive [rimshot] was because I got a little burned out from reading stories like yours, thinking of all the lives that have been passively ruined by this religion. My heart goes out to you.
I'll add my voice to the college choir. Look into community college. Many colleges (even many prestigious ones) offer full online courses. With the current economy, and changing employment landscape, I think it's even more important that your daughter gets a higher education.
Schools like Western Governors University are fully acredited, fully online, and much less expensive than other schools.
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553
Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?
by Chariklo inuntil recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.
it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.
do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.
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A Ha
While I don't think Dawkins is arrogant or offensive, he is more outspoken than most people have come to expect of atheists, and this causes a bit of a backlash.
I think many atheists that appear in the public eye seem to fit a certain stereotype; the staid, boring scientist who only wants to discuss String Theory all day.
In academic circles (and on TV, when an atheist is wanted for a panel discussion) frankly, they don't come across as very engaging. They usually discuss the scientific background, then the talking heads take over to discuss policy or implementation.
On the debate circuit, the (atheist) Professor of Biology who has been experimenting and teaching in the field for 40 years is almost always trounced by the charismatic theist apologist who has an expert grasp of the use of rhetoric and emotional appeals. The apologist is a born showman, the atheist might not utter five sentences all week that don't contain the word "rhibosome."
More importantly, the atheist biologist is not primarily an atheist; he is first and foremost a biologist, and doesn't discuss evolution much because to him the matter has long ago been conclusively settled.
Anyway, along come the new atheists; guys like Dawkins, Dennet, Harris, and the late great master of the polemic, Hitchens. They realize that the god debate is primarily one of public relations and rhetoric. Bald, boring facts aren't enough to win the day, as they would be in their particular fields (biology, neuroscience, etc...). They've learned to be engaging, forceful, sometimes even entertaining. Dawkins, in particular, wants atheists to be proud of their non-belief (witness he and Dennett's ill-advised campaign to term atheists the "brights"); to "come out" and let others know they're not alone.
This confidence and forcefulness are not what the theistic crowd has come to expect from their scientists, and it causes an overreaction.
Of course, I think the real cause is that almost all religionsts around the world, no matter how much power their group wields locally or globally, have a deeply ingrained persecution complex. They're told they'll be persecuted for their faith, then some annoying smart guy tells them their faith is baseless; what else can they conclude but persecution?